Punitive tax policy had kept the world's fastest man from competing in [the U.K.] for the past three years. Explaining Mr. Bolt's decision to skip a 2010 race in London, his agent told reporters: "He will earn a lot less by competing in Britain if he maintains his current endorsement level." Mr. Bolt competed in Paris that August instead.

Few high earners in other fields would choose France over Britain on tax policy, but athletes are a different story. [...] [N]ormally Britain takes a cut of an athlete's worldwide endorsement earnings—that means overseas sponsors in addition to those in the U.K.—proportional to the time spent in Britain.

I was steered to this Wall Street Journal item by Economist John Spry and frequent Twitter sparring partner Craig Westover.

Bolt ran six official races in 2011, including the IAAF World Championships. Had one of those events been held in the U.K., his fees for the race would have been subject to the income tax—as well as one-sixth of his world-wide endorsement income.

One source estimates Bolt's current year income totals $20.3 million, which means $3.83 million of his income would be taxed if he ran in London instead of say, Oslo.

(In the U.S., professional athletes pay income taxes in the states where they perform, as a pro-rated percentage of their salaries, but they don't pay state taxes on their endorsements.)

The article also quotes No. 1 tennis player Rafael Nadal, who makes an estimated $33 million, as skipping a Wimbeldon warm-up event because he was "losing money" by playing in the U.K.

Although making less is not quite the same as losing money, no one would blame Nadal or Bolt for exercising their right to pick where they compete and avoid the tax.

Seen another way, each event Bolt runs does contribute to his worth as an endorser. If he ran no races at all, his value would decline, as it does for all athletes, even self-declared legends.

But is it fair to say Bolt "earned" part of his endorsements in a particular race?

Perhaps. But his sponsors determine what they think his name is worth independently of a specific performance. I personally don't think one-sixth of his endorsement income is attributable to one of six races.

Less obvious, though, is the second part of the conclusion, that "punitive taxation hurts everyone."

Bolt skipping a London race deprives maybe 50,000 spectators of less than ten seconds of live ecstacy, since Bolt races only in a few countries each year anyway. The lost "economic benefit" of him performing in London is also dubious, since sports fans will still spend their discretionary dollars at soccer matches, in pubs or other entertainments.

No one needs to change the tax code to help out Mr. Bolt who, excluding his training time, will run for about three minutes a year to earn his $20 million. He's perfectly capable of avoiding the unfairness.

But by publicizing such exceptional circumstances, the low-to-no-tax advocates seek to spread the sense of unfairness to the rest of us, thereby reducing support for any taxation schemes—but especially those that tax the wealthy.

Wherever you look, the call for smaller government and lower taxes benefits most the people who have the most and have the most power to evade taxes already.

Golfer Brian Davis calls a penalty on himself in a sudden death playoff that costs him nearly $400,000 in prize money, and even more in related earnings.

How often do you see that kind of ethic in professional sports — and in the business world that includes professional sports?

Davis sensed that his back swing brushed a reed in a waste area and called over a rules official to check the television replay. Slow-motion replays confirmed the infraction, and Davis took a two-stroke penalty, handing the win to Jim Furyk.

"To have the tournament come down that way is definitely not the way I
want to win the golf tournament," Furyk said. "It's obviously a tough
loss for him, and I respect and admire what he did.

"To be there
and be in the battle and have an opportunity to win, and then have to
call a penalty on yourself has got to be extremely disappointing.

"It's
a testament to our game and the people that play on the Tour, and that
we have so many guys that do that.

"It's just awkward to see it
happen at such a key moment. Awkward for him to lose that way, and a
little awkward for me to win."

Many moons ago, in the hand-held timing era, I went home from a
conference track meet with the white ribbon instead of the green one
because a coin toss was the only way officials could break down our "photo finish" in the 100-yard dash. With
today's timing technology, they could probably have fitted the entire final of runners
in the imperceptible gap between me and the other guy.

For spectators of many Winter Olympics events, it's extremely to difficult acquire a sensory appreciation of how the race concluded. Some are run as time trials rather than head-to-head, but even seeing racers together, it's difficult to discriminate when they hit the finish within hundredths of a second. Abstracting the result to a number makes it clear, but not visceral.

Of course, television viewers can watch in-progress digital readouts and time comparisons, and we can rerun the "tape" and break it down in slow motion. These methods all rely on the visual sense to convey the information.

The New York Times takes an interesting approach to illustrating the very small differences among finalist finishers, using sound to portray the intervals. (The player for listening to several finishes is here.)

We experience races primarily in the visual realm, but our visual sense is best at discriminating totality. Our sense of hearing, the player demonstrates, is highly attuned to picking up these small differences that are very difficult to judge in a visual field.

Although we don't usually think of it this way, when we listen to music, we are perceiving the spaces between the time and intervals — exactly what race officials have to do.

*****

One other thought about finishes after watching the end of the women's hockey final the other night. The gold-winning Canadians were joyous, naturally, and the second-best Americans seemed to hold onto disappointment bordering on despair.

Elite athletes in all sports want to win, of course, but I wonder if there is a psychological difference in the way competitors react to defeat, based on the style of competition — whether it is team vs. individual sport, and whether the final competition is against the field or a single opponent.

The happy kid in the photo is D, one of the kids in my preschool class. (His mom is at right.) He was talking on New Years Eve about getting his picture taken with Viking Pro-Bowler Bryant McKinnie.

"He's this tall!" said D, stretching high, and putting the Viking's head just under my chin.

McKinnie was at the shelter for the kids' Christmas party and also volunteered at the Thanksgiving dinner.

*****

Continuing to develop my Unauthorized Pre-school Curriculum™, I added the Sleepy Hollow Monster to the Gym Monster activity, which also includes Scary Monster (all time favorite, but hard on the throat), Dodgeball Monster (for the more physically adventurous student; allows them to torment the monster in return, but watch out for the basketballs) and Zombie (not too scary or fast on his feet, so a good choice for semi-anxious new kids).

Sleepy Hollow Monster requires a soft, orange, dodgeball-sized ball slightly deflated, with enough texture to make it easy to grip. We just happened to have one. Also, a long-tailed t-shirt, preferably long sleeved and black.

Place ball on top of head. Pull up neck of shirt so back edge rests on top of ball, holding it in place, and orange "face" is framed in neck opening. Extend arms straight out. Chase children, moving at Frankenstein speed, which won't be difficult, since your vision will be impaired — and after a few minutes of breathing superheated carbon dioxide, you will become winded and dizzy.

I left the comment below over at mnpACT!, where Dave Mindeman dropped a flag on Rep. Tom Emmer's "I don't know why someone hasn't floated taking some of that arts
and entertainment tax and putting it toward the Vikings stadium."

Um, you just did, although in a way that allows you to step out of bounds and deny it was your idea if someone tries to tackle you. This maneuver shows Emmer is clearly GOP governor material.

Another commenter noted that Legacy amendment, stuck in the state constitution by voters in 2008, says what the arts money is to be
spent on "arts, arts education, arts access, and to preserve
Minnesota’s history and cultural heritage."

Emmer is in the legislature, and he may not be the only one there who equates "arts" with "entertainment." Still, despite all the drama over the years, it's not going to be too difficult to cut the Vikings out of the arts definition.

"Cultural heritage," following "history" as it does, seems to mean Native Americans, German Turners, Slovak miners, Irish entrepreneurs, Norwegian ministers and Rondo dwellers, among others. But what about General Mills, Polaris snowmobiles and a sports franchise "meant to reflect Minnesota's place as a center of Scandinavian American culture" that has been around longer than most Minnesotans have been alive?

We can thank Rep. Emmer for illustrating so soon the folly of trying to work around legislative gutlessness by putting more bricks in the state constitution.

An early-shopping mother had bought a Sunday red Tiger Woods branded shirt as a Christmas present for her adult son. She was talking with a group of women about whether she should take it back to the store and exchange it for another brand.

One suggestion: It's his gift, let him take it back if he wants.

Mother: Well... I'd feel good if he did that, but what if he doesn't? Then I'd be annoyed whenever I saw him wear it.

Another said: It's your shirt until you give it to him. If it makes you feel icky, return it. He'll never know.

Mother: I'll take it back this afternoon.

That's the abridged version. No one really questioned why the mom would feel that way or that her desire to dump the shirt was at all off base.

Let me speculate here that a men's discussion might go differently, with the least noxious statement being to the effect that it's just a shirt.

I, for one, have changed my buying pattern and no longer will purchase
Nike, Gatorade or any Pepsi products, Gillette is a goner, AT&T
will never be my cell phone carrier and I no longer use my AmEx credit
card. [...]

And Jason responds:

give me a break, you expect us to believe that you will not purchase
nike, pepsi, gillette, at&t, or amex products – this is a crock,
and any educated consumer will base their purchase decisions on product
quality and perceived value, not sponsorship

Kurt also rationalizes:

First of all, the sponsor companies did not know about Tiger’s
actions until after the fact. This is why you are seeing and will
continue to see certain sponsors drop Tiger. So you can’t really blame
the consumer companies. They did what they thought to be best at the
time of acquiring him as a spokesperson.

The sponsored athlete does not make the products good, the producing company does. The athlete is merely a marketing strategy.

Like Jason said, if you are dumb enough to buy or drop products
solely because of the associated athlete, then you are NOT a smart,
educated consumer.

These guys totally miss the fact that they are paying extra for the "perceived value" of a $75 to $100 TW shirt. They are ignoring their own response to the emotional dimension of brands, as well as the fact that women consumers may view Tiger's behavior differently than they do.

Bill has a more nuanced take:

I
see Nike & Woods as actually four brands: 1) the Tiger Woods
garments with his TW logo. These sales will suffer. 2) Nike golf clubs
which had a poor image until Tiger won with them. These too may suffer,
somewhat. 3) Nike golf clothing. Not a factor. You’re not going to
switch to inferior fabrics/styles at Adidas etc. to avoid the swoosh.
4) Other Nike sporting goods. Not a factor. But back to #1 and 2…Nike
has to think twice about its ads showing Tiger in a “heroic”
follow-thru pose.

Given that a lot of menswear is purchased by women, Nike has to
be concerned about the likelihood that its Tiger line of
clothing is going to take a hit. For how long remains to be seen, but the value of his endorsement has to have plummeted.

And if sales do drop, it's certainly not a matter of women not being "smart, educated consumers."

This was the week of sports stars driving badly and state revenue forecasts behaving badly. Hmmm, where to start?

*****

The past criticism of Earl Woods for putting too much pressure on little Tiger has to be seen a fresh light this week. This obit for the senior Woods in 2006 was typical of how he was honored for his role in his son's success.

“I wanted to raise a good person,” Earl Woods told Golf Digest in
November of 2000, and therein lies the real glory to a man whose life
deserves to be celebrated.

[...]

“He has the power to do a lot of things with his charisma,” Earl Woods
said on the eve of the 2003 Deutsche Bank Championship outside of
Boston, a tournament that would benefit the Tiger Woods Foundation.
“Some day, he will do a lot of great things. I don’t know what they are
yet, but knowing Tiger Woods, they won’t be small.”

Whatever you think about the failings of sports stars and the temptations they face, the latest developments also reveal Tiger to be a conflicted and unhappy person. His legendary self-control, supposedly the product of his father's training, apparently applied only on the golf course — and may have left him poorly equipped with empathy and other strengths that come in handy, even for gods.

Fathers can get too much credit for success as well as failure of their children, but no one can accuse Tiger's dad of neglect.

*****

Didn't mean to leave you hanging if you were really after budget talk.

This month Wisconsin will pay close to $70 million to Minnesota because
Wisconsin has about 20,000 more residents crossing the border to work
in Minnesota. That annual payment includes an 8 percent interest
charge. Almost $82 million was budgeted for this annual payment, but
the recession with job losses has lowered the amount Wisconsin owes.

Backing out of a tax reciprocity agreement with Wisconsin is one other way Gov. Pawlenty sought to come up with revenue without "raising taxes." I don't necessarily disagree with Wisconsin residents who make their living here paying income taxes here, but note that this is a way to tax someone who can't vote against him. Pretty brave.

Govs. Pawlenty and Doyle announced a shared services agreement between the two states early this year that was supposed to net $10 million in annual savings for each. August news reports said Wisconsin could point to $74,313 in savings. The Minnesota savings were so paltry, a figure wasn't even tracked by the state. The cabinet member in charge of Pawlenty's Drive to Excellence effort, which included the shared services initiative, left his staff earlier this year — according to my sources, frustrated with Pawlenty's fiscal leadership.

This failure is as much the
fault of the left as it is the president's. Somehow we managed to
convince ourselves that simply by electing a new president, we could
achieve a fundamental change of direction in America. But, as usual,
after being beaten at the ballot box, the right wing has redoubled its
efforts to maintain control over the American political process, while
the left remains just as impotent as it was during the Bush years.

Politico says the well-tanned Ohio Rep. John Boehner is a prolific fundraiser and golfer whose political action committee has spent $82,998 on golf outings so far this year.

The story says Boehner is a "pretty good golfer" with a 7.9 handicap.

That would make him a decent golfer, provided he kept his handicap properly, but I'm suspicious.

The USGA records show that Boehner has posted all but one of his scores at his home course. His 20 scores go all the way back to June 2007, with only eight scores for this year.

Maybe he only plays in scrambles when he's away from home, so he can't post his scores, but I don't know any golfers with a single digit handicap who live in two places, travel and play so little, at just one course.

Boehner's handicap may be legitimate, but to me it has the markings of the "reverse sandbagger" who only posts his best scores so he can maintain his self-image as a pretty good golfer.

For you non-golfers, a sandbagger is someone who inflates his scores in order to have a higher handicap that is advantageous in competitions. A reverse sandbagger is more concerned about looking good in the bar, so he's only cheating himself.

A few miles outside of Los Angeles, in a business-tax-free haven of
strip malls and strip clubs called the City of Industry -- under 800
residents and fewer than 100 voters -- ground is ready to be broken for
an $800-million football stadium. The team to play there is yet to be
determined.

[...]

As Neil deMause, coauthor of "Field of Schemes," told me: "It's a weird
one, in large part because the City of Industry is so weird. Arnold's
claim that it's entirely privately financed is a crock -- the land and
infrastructure is being funded by property taxes -- but in a town with
barely any actual people in it, you could legitimately argue that the
industry in Industry is just voting to tax itself to bring the NFL to
town."

The Minnesota Vikings are one of the teams the City of Industry hopes to attract, and the Wilfs are again making noises about how terrible their stadium situation is.

If the stadium without the team in the town without people attracts the Vikings, will the franchise be renamed City of Industry Migrants?

So far, in public, the negotiations haven't reached the blackmail stage, where the team threatens to move to the open arms of City of Industry. But wait for it.

The Vikes are so far riding a wave of winning unmarked this season by lap dances, assaults, drunk driving or steroid abuse. The lobbyists will try to point out how much business and tax revenue a team brings to a city — use that to justify public spending for a new venue.

But we have a governor who has given tax shuffles a bad name. The Vikings tax revenue is already going into state coffers, so moving it to stadium payments will take it away from somewhere. And we have plenty of more basic needs, such as health care for the poor, that are taking a hit in the coming year.

Public subsidies for sports teams don't work out any better than they do for corporations who want tax incentives to build plants or relocate jobs. But the teams have something more going for the. They can tap the emotion of fans, and not just raise the ire of taxpayers.